Thursday, October 18, 2007

A penguin's eye view

Rodney the emperor penguin, equipped with a National Geographic Crittercam, gets ready to dive beneath the Antarctic ice.

Scientists were puzzled until recently by how Antarctica’s emperor penguins, stars of the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins, had adapted their feeding strategies to melting habitats threatening to endanger them. From above ground it seemed little had changed.

The Crittercam revealed that the penguins were diving deep under ice caps, using sunlight to spot small fish, and shooting up to catch them.

The Crittercam has already been used over 500 times on small whales, sharks, sea turtles and emperor penguins, and has changed the assumptions scientists had made about how those animals communicate, hunt, feed and nurse. More than 50 scientists attended the symposium this weekend to share how they have used Crittercam technology in their work.

Photo: Greg Marshall/National Geographic

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Rodney and the crittercam. I saw this little guy on the National Geographic Channel over the summer.

Anonymous said...

I love Rodney and his human friends too. I Even named my stuffed emperor Rodney!!